The settlement negotiations between eighteen domestic and foreign open source IT service vendors have failed, the Swiss Federal Department for Building and Logistics (BBL) announced on December 9. Their dispute will now go to the Swiss Federal Administrative Court.
The open source IT service providers had appealed to the federal court in May claiming that BBL had ignored procurement rules by signing a software licence agreement with Microsoft worth 42 million CHF (about 27.8 million euro) without a call for tender. The companies leading the charge wanted to achieve parity in calls for tender so that all IT enterprises would have an equal chance. The case then lapsed while the parties tried to agree on a settlement.
The Swiss agency is now officially appealing to the federal court to reopen the case. In BBL's announcement, they say that the claimants "failed to agree to the government's conciliatory proposal."
In reaction to this assessment, the claimants issued a counterargument in their defence. The website of the ch/open open source advocacy group states that the Swiss agency had made it clear from the outset that it was not willing to commit itself to the actual goal of public tendering of IT contracts nor to any binding principles. According to ch/open spokesperson Matthias Stürmer, "Obviously the federal agency wants to continue freely awarding contracts as it may to a large number of IT projects."
The group of open source IT companies is hopeful that the renewed court case will provide a successful outcome.
More information:
BBL announcement (in German)
Position statement from ch/open (in German)